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Equinox Bundles

The Equinox Bundles component is tasked with implementing all add-on services
detailed in the OSGi specifications including the output of the various OSGi Expert groups.
For example, the Core Platform, Enterprise and Mobile Expert Groups.
In addition, the bundles component
team defines and produces bundles and services that are of general utility
to OSGi systems and programmers. For example, the Bundles team is responsible
for the Extenstion registry used throughout Eclipse.

Bundle Projects

The Bundles component consists of several "projects" in the Equinox
bundles git repository (see the resources page for information
on repository location and access). In general the name of the project matches
the symbolic name of the resultant bundle.

Common Utility Bundle (org.eclipse.equinox.common) status:green
A library of utility classes (e.g., IStatus, Assert, IAdaptable, ...) that
are frequently used by Eclipse bundles. This bundle can be used in various
different OSGi systems or standalone (i.e., without OSGi).

Device Access
Service (org.eclipse.equinox.device) status:green
An implementation of the OSGi R4 Device Access service. This service provides
automatic detection of attached and detached hardware devices and can automatically
download and start appropriate device drivers.

Declarative Services (org.eclipse.equinox.ds) status:green
An implementation of the OSGi R4 Declarative Services specification.
This service simplifies the task of authoring OSGi services by performing
the work of registering the service and handling service dependencies.
This minimizes the amount of code a programmer has to write; it also allows
service components to be loaded only when they are needed.

Event Admin Service
(org.eclipse.equinox.event) status:green
An implementation of the OSGi R4 Event Admin Service. This service provides
an inter-bundle communication mechanism based on an event publish and
subscribe model,
popular in many message-based systems.

HTTP Service
(org.eclipse.equinox.http) status:orange
An implementation of the OSGi R4 HTTP service. This service provides an embedded
HTTP server that is capable of serving HTML and Java servlets.

IO Connector Service
(org.eclipse.equinox.io) status:green
An implementation of the OSGi R4 IO Connector Service. This service adopts the javax.microedition.io packages as a basic communications infrastructure.
This specification defines a service that adopts the flexible model of the Connector framework in J2ME, but allows OSGi bundles to extend it.

Initial Provisioning
(org.eclipse.equinox.ip) status:green
An implementation of the OSGi R4 Initial Provisioning. This service Defines how the Management Agent can make its way to the Service Platform,
and gives a structured view of the problems and their corresponding resolution methods.

Log Service (org.eclipse.equinox.log) status:green
An implementation of the OSGi R4 Log service. This service provides a general-purpose
message logger for the OSGi environment. In the Indigo (3.7) release the Equinox log service was integrated directly into
the core framework. This bundle is no longer needed if you are using the 3.7 or greater Equinox Framework.

Metatype Service
(org.eclipse.equinox.metatype) status:green
An implementation of the OSGi R4 Metatype service. This service defines interfaces
that allow bundle developers to describe attribute types in a computer readable
form using so-called metadata. It allows services to specify the type of
information of data that they can use as arguments.

Extension Registry (org.eclipse.equinox.registry) status:green
The Eclipse extension registry allows bundles to communicate and cooperate
using declarative markup and lazy instantiation. The extension mechanism
is similar to OSGi services and declarative services but has some different
contractual and management characteristics.

Supplemental Bundle/JAR (org.eclipse.equinox.supplement) status:green
A library that includes a very small number of types normally supplied by
the Equinox implementation. This JAR is useful when running certain bundles
outside of Equinox or outside of OSGi altogether. This bundle is not needed
when running inside Equinox.

Wire Admin Service
(org.eclipse.equinox.wireadmin) status:green
An implementation of the OSGi R4 Wire Admin Service. This is an administrative
service that is used to control a wiring topology in the OSGi Service Platform.
It is intended to be used by user interfaces or management programs that
control the wiring of services in an OSGi Service Platform.

OSGi Services API (org.eclipse.osgi.services) status:green
This bundle contains the set of OSGi specified service APIs. It is included
here as a convenience for people developing or deploying service implementations
independent of their specification.

OSGi Utilities (org.eclipse.osgi.util) status:green
This bundle contains the set of OSGi specified utilities (e.g., ServiceTracker).
It is included here as a convenience.

Status keygreen - bundle is production ready.
orange - bundle has been deprecated.
red - bundle development is in progress.

The team typically develops using Eclipse itself with eGit installed so getting and
managing the projects is quite straightforward. Simply start Eclipse, and use Import > Git > Projects
from Git. Enter the repo access information and choose the projects
you want to load into the workspace.

If you are working without Eclipse (gads! :-) then use your favorite git client
and check out the relevant repositories.

Specifications

The specifications for the services are available from the OSGi web
site. Click here to
download them.